Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/329

Rh producing inlaid and embossed art tiles, and at other points tile factories are in operation, but we must content ourselves with this very incomplete sketch of the principal establishments in this country.

In the manufacture of printed, inlaid, and relief tiles, America has advanced rapidly, but in the production of hand-painted art tiles she is sadly deficient. This is a branch of the art that must be developed through the influence of our mechanical art schools, which are paving the way for an early revolution in the ceramic industry in the United States.

Various tile machines have been designed for the manufacture of tiles from dust or semi-dry clay, but we are unable here to reproduce more than one. Fig. 43 shows a screw press, made by Mr. Peter Wilkes, of Trenton, for the Trent Tile Company, and will give an excellent idea of the principle on which the majority of such machines are operated. This forms tiles six inches to twelve inches square, the die being placed between the "push-up" and "plunger." It can also be used for making plates, oval dishes, and other ware.

—It is interesting to note what the fifth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, published in 1815, contains relative to this subject: "Worlidge, and others after him, have endeavored to excite brick-makers to try their skill in making a new kind of brick, or a composition of clay and sand, whereof to form window-frames, chimney-pieces, door-cases, and the like. It is to be made in pieces, fashioned in molds, which, when burnt, may be set together with a fine red cement, and seem as one entire piece. The thing should seem feasible." And so we shall find that it was.

Terra cotta, the most enduring of all building materials, has